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Friday, May 5, 2017

Finish It Up Friday 5-5-17

I'm at a quilting retreat today in this beautiful setting.

Before I left home on Wednesday I finished two things. I had been working on a small wall hanging. It was started some time ago. I wish I had remembered to take pictures. The images were fused to the background, but I found that I had placed them wrong and they were too big for the background. I added the darker brown fabric to make the top large enough to accommodate the pieces. I button-hole stitched around most of the pieces , but decided to do a little zig zag around the butterflies and flowers. They are tiny and I like that stitch better in tiny spaces. Then as I trimmed up the backing and batting to get ready for the binding, I decided I needed to add the darker brown at the bottom and top to be more symmetrical. Call me crazy. That meant that the backing and the batting needed to be added to also. So I made it so!!

Luckily, this is a wall hanging and won't be washed often if at all. I had to go to my stash for a suitable binding fabric because I used all the fabric in the kit for borders!

It is done and ready to hang. This is a Patch Abilities pattern, Butterfly Haven #MM08, dated 2007. It has been in my basket of kits for some time.

I was also working on a counted cross stitch project for another challenge. I am to the point in the design where there are tons of thread color changes. I used to have a specialty pincushion that allowed me to keep needles threaded and had a place to mark on it the thread color and symbol. I was following Amanda Jean's blog tour for her new book No Scrap Left Behind. I own her book, and the post from Mary Kolb, reminded me about the Needle Sorter pattern . I thought about it for a bit and then had an idea. I thought if I put a piece of thin clear vinyl over the top of the pincushion , I could write on it with white board markers. But that did not work ,the wipe off markers "wipe off" the vinyl way too easily. Like with a finger tip. So I thought maybe I could make small labels that would stick on the vinyl , but not permanently. It worked!

This is my sorter on the page of Amanda Jean's book, No Scrap Left Behind. You can see the shine of the vinyl on top.

I used clear vinyl from Walmart, I had it in my stash, my rotary cutter dedicated for paper only and wonder clips instead of pins. Although you can carefully pin through the vinyl.

I made the pincushion according to Amanda Jeans directions, I just added a 3 1/2 X 7 piece of clear vinyl to the top of the center before I added the top and bottom strips. If I do it again, I will only cover the white square sections. But I love how it turned out. You can see how I have small pieces of file folder labels, cut in squares with the thread color number and the symbol used in my cross stitch pattern. They come off will just a little help, but will not just fall off. The needles are in the border strips above and below. A cross stitch needle is blunt on the end, so it will not pierce the vinyl. A win, win in my book.

I have scheduled this to post on Friday the 5th of May. There will be intermittent internet service while at retreat. If I can get to it, I will link to Amanda Jean's Friday Post. If not, just go to her blog, Crazy Mom Quilts and look for the Finish It Up Friday event.

Finished or Not Friday

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About Me

I have been married for 52 years, have 2 children, 4 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. I have always been a crafter. Trying different things at different times in my life. Of course, I love to read.